Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress today was heartily welcomed by U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (NJ-04).

 “We have to be realistic about Iranian President Rouhani because many in the media – and some in the administration – have been reluctant to do that. Rouhani has a long history of murderous anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. The corpses are all over the globe,” said Smith, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is the man that our government and Prime Minister Netanyahu are dealing with. For 16 years, Rouhani ran Iran’s nuclear program. He has boasted openly of his success in using negotiations as a tool to buy time to advance his program. The question before us is whether the agreement President Obama is trying to close with Rouhani is yet another deal favorable to the Iranian government, allowing it to move the hand on the nuclear clock yet closer to midnight.”

 Click here to read Congressman Smith’s statement on the Congressional Record.

 Rep. Smith has long been a congressional leader in the fight against anti-Semitism. He is the author of the provisions of the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004 that created the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism within the U.S. State Department. In 2009, he delivered the keynote address at the Interparliamentary Coalition Combating Anti-Semitism London conference. An outcome of his landmark 2002 hearing, “Escalating Anti-Semitic Violence in Europe,” he led a congressional drive to place the issue of combating anti-Semitism at the top of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agenda.  As a result, in 2004 the OSCE adopted new norms for its 56 member states on fighting anti-Semitism. In the early 1980s, his first trips abroad as a member of Congress were to the former Soviet Union, where he fought for the release of Jewish “refuseniks,” and in the 1990s, he chaired Congress’s first hearings on anti-Semitism.

 Today was Prime Minister Netanyahu’s third appearance before a joint meeting of Congress, and his second during Boehner’s speakership. His previous addresses were on July 10, 1996 and May 24, 2011. Other Israeli prime ministers to address Congress include Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin.

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